


Snowmelt

by xathira



Series: Prince of the Unknown [10]
Category: Over the Garden Wall (Cartoon & Comics)
Genre: Beast Wirt, Hurt/Comfort, Other, Prince!Wirt AU, Wirt is an awkward dork, but we already knew that, poorly written fluff that just gets kinda sad again, some consequences
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-15
Updated: 2019-11-15
Packaged: 2021-01-31 00:54:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21437527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xathira/pseuds/xathira
Summary: Winter is over.  That means Wirt's idyllic respite has come to an end, too.
Relationships: Beatrice & Wirt (Over the Garden Wall)
Series: Prince of the Unknown [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1516961
Comments: 23
Kudos: 184





	1. 🙞Stream🙜

Change arrives to the Unknown so gently, so subtly, that at first Wirt does not notice. The festering ache planted in his chest gradually scars over until he hardly registers the burn. He starts helping out with chores around the family property; he brings armfuls of wood that Bram and Andrew chop into neater piles for the hearth; edible winter foraging is sparse, yet he manages to coax forth small berries, hard-shelled nuts, mushrooms, and roots to supplement meals. He tries not to be discouraged when he catches the hushed conversations of Beatrice’s parents as they worry over their ever-shrinking rations. He pretends he doesn’t heart the gurgling of stomachs left mostly empty, or see the prominence of Beatrice’s cheekbones when she offers (forces) food. 

It’s as if this voracious winter has eaten half the year. Perhaps it has. But the ruthless season has to end eventually… or the hopelessness that perches vulture-like on the house’s roof will strike. Wirt has been doing better lately—much, _much_ better—and he has no desire to test his willpower against the people who have shown him such overflowing generosity. 

It requires enough of his concentration already not to inhale the desperation that clings to Beatrice like a vague perfume. Edelwood wants to grow where The Beast nests, wants to climb up the sides of the cottage in disjointed vines and reach through the windows to snatch the vulnerable souls within. If he hadn’t been allowed to heal under the attention of Beatrice and her siblings… Wirt wouldn’t be able to stop himself. He knows this. And that understanding makes him even more fiercely protective of this big unselfish family. 

Wirt cannot save everyone in the Unknown, but swears he will help _these_ people. They’re _his_ to watch out for. _His_ to see through the winter. Just as Beatrice promised him to be a better friend, Wirt inwardly promises to be a better Beast. It didn’t work so great the first time… but the stakes are higher now. Too high to fail.

His determination eases the permanent chill where his soul used to repose. It sews strong roots into his frayed heartstrings. He uses it as a fortress to cage the instinct to _claim_ and _stalk_ and _hunt._ When nightmares threaten, when snapshots of morbid memory startle him in the middle of a task, he clings to it like a liferaft. If people are still making sacrifices in The Beast’s name, then Wirt is none the wiser; he’s sated enough by the gifts that his adopted family presents to him out of the goodness of their hearts.

🙞 ------------------------- 🙜

Morning marks Wirt deep in the woods that fence one of the family’s grain fields. He’s taken to spending more and more time outside now that he’s fully recovered, never straying too far from a shout calling him home. The Unknown feels more… alive to him, recently. A restlessness urges Wirt to stay busy, moving, scenting the breeze for shifts in weather or listening for novel animal activity. He can’t put his finger on what’s going on—

“Hey, Chicken-Fingers! I’ve got a present for you.”

Beatrice’s teasing distracts Wirt from his current task: digging up cattail roots along the glitter of a small frozen stream. He deflates and drags out a long-suffering sigh without turning to look at her. “I told you to stop calling me that.”

“Pshaw. You’ve got scrawny little claws like a chicken—therefore, ‘Chicken-Fingers.’ Look, you’re even scratching in the dirt. So cute.” Her boots crunch through the snow behind him and Wirt is pretty sure he hears a skip in her step.

“I’m not scratching—I am _foraging,_ for your information.” Wirt feels his big ears and the back of his neck heating up and hunches lower over the stream’s bank as Beatrice cackles. Under his breath he mutters, “and I am not _cute._”

“What was that, Gnome Prince?” Her shadow falls across him; still Wirt refuses to turn around. Instead he makes a show of pulling up a root thicker than his thumb with hairy rhizomes that snap as he tugs them from the frigid soil. It’s added to a modest pile of other roots and greens that a few birds and squirrels dropped off; he’s carrying everything in a makeshift sling fashioned from his borrowed cloak.

“Did you happen to bring a basket with you? Something more useful than a bunch of childish nicknames?” The sullenness oozing from him makes Beatrice snicker before perching something on his head.

Wirt startles at the slight, unexpected weight. He swipes whatever it is off his crown with one hand and then just stares at it while the claws of his other hand are still buried in the hard-packed mud. 

A bright red felt cone. 

“It fell off when…” Beatrice trails off uncertainly. A memory of unimaginable anguish shreds through Wirt’s chest; he’s too shocked to speak and doesn’t react to her cautiously lowering into a crouch next to him, facing the smooth ripples of ice. “I found it in that clearing a while ago and took it home… it’s been under my bed collecting dust. Not that I put the stupid thing there for a reason, or anything.” She adds this quickly and picks at a loose thread in her shawl. “I just… didn’t want to throw it away. Because nostalgia or whatever. Anyhow—I thought you might want it back. As a reminder. From when you were… from before.”

When Wirt peers over at her, Beatrice has puffed her cheeks out as though holding back another torrent of words. Pink flushes under the brown-sugar dusting of her freckles and she’s glowering even more intensely than Wirt had been at the stream. 

The Beast runs his thumbs thoughtfully along the hat’s brim. It feels as if he’s been punched in the heart… but in a good way? He hurts as he studies the ridiculous cone yet it’s not an entirely _awful_ hurt. His voice is a murmur of snowfall. “You… went back? All those months ago?” 

Beatrice pivots on her heels to glare at him—affronted. “Of course I went back for you! Are you kidding me? _Ugh._” Eyes rolling skyward. The sight is so familiar to Wirt that he can mimic it perfectly… so long as Beatrice isn’t within kicking range. The redhead visibly wrestles her irritation back under control and contritely frowns at the pile of cattail roots. “I just didn’t return soon enough, that’s all. Where did you even go after I left?”

Wirt hasn’t told Beatrice that he and Greg had found the mill the same day they’d met her as a bird. He also hasn’t told her that the reason their mill is in shambles is because the family’s simpleminded dog, Rusty, had somehow swallowed a black turtle and gone on a mindless, slobbering rampage. He worries that once he starts revealing secrets—or any detail from his recent beastly past—they’ll all bleed out of him in a gory rush. Painful. Crushing. Coward that he is, Wirt fears losing Beatrice’s support after she learns of his _true_ sins… the graveyards he’s created in the woods… and ruining this faltering connection between them scares him so much that Wirt feels sick to his stomach simply _thinking_ about it.

He chokes back a tide of bile rising up his throat. No—he does not want to tell Beatrice. Not about what happened to him after he cut her wings, and not about everything that happened during winter's ceaseless tyranny. Not yet. She made him a promise, and he trusts her, mostly… but this is another thing that he won’t dare test, just like the strength of his resistance to the family’s destitution. Besides, telling secrets means digging them up from where he’s buried them. Ghosts haunt his dreams and waking moments and exhuming them purposefully sounds like pointless torture. 

“Wirt? Hello? You’re going shady again.”

Wirt registers Beatrice’s hands waving an inch in front of his nose; he also realizes that he’s unintentionally pulled pure darkness around himself, erasing every facet of his identity except for his silhouette and the melancholy glow of his eyes. “O-oh. Sorry.” Shadows slide from his face and down his neck like a silk sheet and gather underneath him where they belong. His claws go back to deftly harvesting cattail roots, the red cone hat perched on one knee. “I don’t… I’m n-not sure… that whole period in my memory is sort of a blur.”

“Mhmm. All right.” Beatrice bites her lower lip as she has every other moment Wirt evades a real answer—not pressing, although it’s obvious in the restlessness of her posture and the knit between her brows that she _wants_ to shake information out of him. Beatrice is being careful, just like Wirt. Afraid to crack their friendship, or their agreement, or whatever it is that has kept them together so far. 

“Here.” She blinks, surprised, when Wirt yanks up a particularly fat root and holds it out to her. Wirt doesn’t let go as her grip closes warily over the bundle of tendrils, their fingertips brushing. He’s glancing deliberately off to the side, to where the iced-over stream cuts like a crystal sculpture through this dip in the forest. This time it isn’t just his ears blushing; the light of his eyes gleams a cozy pastel rose—a color that Beatrice has never seen him emit before. “Th-thanks.”

“For what?” Beatrice muses, pretending to study the root when her focus rivets on Wirt’s shy expression and the pink light painting his face. 

“For… a lot of stuff.” He releases his hold on the root in favor of picking up his old hat again. “Bringing me home. Taking the arrows out of my back. Feeding me—which, seriously, you can stop.” Beatrice sneers and grills him with a _shut your mouth_ glare, so Wirt coughs awkwardly and moves on, tone settling softer and softer. “You and your family have done a lot for me, and you didn’t need to. You didn’t give up on me, even though… I gave up on me. A while ago.” 

“Yep. We’re pretty great,” Beatrice quips. She doesn’t appreciate how Wirt’s mawkish speech stuffs a lump in her throat and seizes her with the inappropriate urge to crush him in a bearhug like she would one of her own brothers. “Are you done being a total sap? I can help carry some of this most incredible bounty you’ve gathered for us. What’s all that fungus mixed in with the roots?”

“Late fall oyster mushroom,” Wirt blabs without hesitation. Then he growls impatiently, turning to face Beatrice fully so she has no choice but to take in the rawness of guilt and gratitude pouring forth from his stupid sad pink puppy-dog eyes. “Listen, Beatrice, I’m being completely earnest. You were the bird, but I am the one in need of a roost, torn about the malicious winds of fate like a feather. I was lost, never to return. That you sheltered me in my time of need… that y-you went back for me, kept this momento in safekeeping… I could never repay you...”

He twists the absurd red hat in his claws so hard that Beatrice snags it from him with a snort. “You’re going to destroy your momento,” she says with a raised brow. Before Wirt can continue his needless gushing the girl stuffs his cone back on his head, where it balances on the bases of his antlers, mussing his hair. “There. That’s better. Can’t be Gnome Prince without your crown.”

Gratefulness forgotten, Wirt gags indignantly. “‘Gnome Prince’ is almost as bad as ‘Chicken-Fingers!’”

“Ah, you’re right. My sincerest apologies, Gnome _King._”

In revenge, when the pair stands up to search for more winter treats downstream, Wirt has to trip her with a root that curls just a little farther from the ground than it needs to.

The pair steps effortlessly into the routine they established after Wirt was well enough to travel the woods. Wirt points out velvet foot mushrooms and chaga sprouting from bare tree trunks; he pours handfuls of juniper berries into Beatrice’s waiting hands—laughing at the sour grimace her face screws into when she tries to taste one; they brush the frost off claytonia and daisy greens and brush dirt off more succulent roots. 

They’ve built a companionable silence around themselves. At some point, however, after glimpsing his peaked-hat profile cast against the snow, Wirt sighs and waxes nostalgic. 

“I guess this isn’t so bad… being useful as a Beast. And at least my last act as a human being was doing something _right._” A short huff of a laugh. Wirt shakes his head sheepishly, wistful but not resentful. He’s carrying his bounty-filled cloak in both arms and hugs it to his chest. “Well. I made the biggest mistake of my life, but I was finally a better brother to Greg. That's probably somewhat meaningful.”

Beatrice bumps her shoulder into him, jostling the boy out of his melancholy thoughts. “Of course it is,” she tells him firmly. And Wirt knows she isn’t just saying that, because like her unconscious despair he can feel the warmth of her honesty, too. 

A small, bashful smile lifts both corners of his mouth. Beatrice juts her chin and marches on ahead of him to where she announces she’s found some teaberries. Wirt is content to supervise until he notices a faint musical sound approaching from upstream.

He tilts his head to better catch the faraway trickle. Beatrice starts to ask if something is wrong but Wirt shushes her by holding up one thorny finger. “D’you hear that? It sounds like…”

Wirt sucks in a miniature gasp. The ice trapping the stream is beginning to melt. Water tumbles playfully over sticks and pebbles, gaining speed and volume as it burbles down its path; its newly liquid surface shivers with shimmers of silver that flicker across like fish. Giddy, Wirt lays down his bundled cloak so he can drop to his knees and dip his claws into the current. 

“Snowmelt,” he grins up at Beatrice, a single breathless laugh leaping from his chest. “You know what this means?”

The forest is thawing. Winter is dying. Spring has arrived in the Unknown at last.


	2. 🙞Wood🙜

Beatrice doesn’t want to believe the good news. Neither does her family. It takes Wirt days of pointing out the signs—melting icicles, receding snow, warmer sunlight, the return of springtime birds—for them to finally start to _hope_ that this harsh winter is drawing to a close. And if their despair made Wirt’s mouth water, then this positive shift in energy has him positively _starved_ for more. 

Wirt smiles more readily and more often since that first snowmelt. They are small, fragile smiles, easily broken and as quick to vanish as snowflakes on a windowpane… yet they reach his eyes. _Real._ Beatrice and her family are going to be okay. They’re going to survive. His only wish is that they won’t die and it’s coming true.

The Unknown mirrors his tentative joy. The drowsy murmur that weaves between the trees awakens into a brighter melody, a voiceless song that lifts Wirt’s spirits. While he patrols the perimeter of the family’s property, diligently encouraging new growth and greeting the curious animals that tag along, he unconsciously hums a harmony that preens in his chest like a songbird sunning its wings. Greenery pushes through the lingering snow and beckons him. No longer is the sky constantly a brittle sheet of bone-white or the ash-grey of an impending blizzard; clouds sail against a sea of limpid blue that only hides its splendor at the approach of early spring rain. 

With the progress of the season, Beatrice’s father decides it’s finally time to repair all the destroyed sections of the mill. Wirt returns from one of his patrols—warblers trilling from his antlers and four rabbits hopping in his footsteps—to Andrew, Bram, and Calvin all discussing what can be done about the worst of the damage. He doffs his red cone hat and wonders how he can hide it before the men notice.

“We don’t have enough timber to patch the walls _and_ the roof,” mutters Beatrice’s father (Wirt has taken to calling him “Sir” and cannot bring himself to use any other term, even though it makes Beatrice’s siblings laugh). “We’ll have to address the walls first, I suppose, and figure out what we’re going to trade for the other supplies in town…” 

“Even then we can only pick one wall,” Andrew adds sourly. “Remember? We had to burn some of the lathe a few months ago when that snowstorm—”

“Hey, Wirt!” Calvin—only a year younger than Beatrice—catches sight of The Beast hesitantly walking along the river up toward the mill and waves cheerfully. “You’re back sooner than we thought!”

The rabbits take off into the underbrush. The birds don’t flit from their perches until Wirt shoos them self-consciously. “H-h-hey,” he calls back, hat currently dangling from one hand. “You were… t-talking about the mill?”

“Don’t worry boy, we’re not throwing you out,” Sir reassures Wirt as he nervously joins them. Andrew and Bram offer their own half-hearted welcomes, bodies turned away from him, as they regard a tall split through which Wirt can see his hay-bed. Embarrassment heats Wirt’s face; he hadn’t really thought about how _weird_ his current “bedroom” is until half the gentlemen in Beatrice’s life are staring at it. “We’d like to get this place operational before corn-planting time.” 

“R-right. Of course. For all the, ah, grain.”

“That _is_ what a grist mill is for,” Andrew mutters dryly. “I don’t suppose you’d have any fancy tricks for completing all these repairs?”

Wirt has gotten sidetracked by the thought of grain—all the good he can do marching up and down the fields inspiring the stalks to grow higher, to produce a greater yield—and he coughs to poorly cover his lapse in attention. “Oh, I’m… no good with tools. Not that I can’t learn! I w-want to learn, maybe on some smaller tools first? Do you have those? Actually I’d p-probably just get in the way...” 

Bram and Andrew sigh, shaking their heads; Calvin and Sir exchange amused, tolerant glances. “Too bad you can’t grow walls like you can grow trees,” Calvin rags.

Wirt ducks his head shamefully. Then he blinks, an idea blooming behind his eyes. “What if I _could?_”

🙞 ------------------------- 🙜

“I’m looking forward to spring,” Wirt admits, redundantly, while he assists Beatrice’s brothers and father with repairing the mill. They all concur amiably with his sentiment between work, their relief sweetening the air and dispelling a forlorn fog of exhaustion that only Wirt can detect. The men merely have to nail a few boards in each crumbled section of wall or roof; Wirt grafts branches that sprout and stretch across any gaps. In the blue-grey dawn light the mill resembles an ugly Frankenstein’s monster of gnobby natural wood and smooth planks, and as the day wheels onward some of the fresh boughs reaching from the mill’s sides sport tiny leaf-buds. 

In a miracle of teamwork they are able to seal the walls and the roof in three days. Wirt silently glows with the joy of being helpful. Even Bram and Andrew relinquish their previous irritation, glad and amazed at what they've accomplished.

After the men have finished hammering the last nail, the pastel hues of morning enrich into blazes of sunset. Everyone gathers by the river to admire their handiwork. Beatrice’s father ruffles the hair on each of his sons’ heads, praising them for a job well done. When he gets to Wirt at the end of the line, secluded a few feet from the group, The Beast is staring off into space and distracted by his own optimistic thoughts.

Wirt goes rigid at the sensation of a rough palm frizzing his scalp. He hears a warm, fatherly voice tell him “Good work, boy.” And then Andrew, Bram, and Calvin are clapping him on the back on their way inside for supper, asking Wirt if he’s going to join them at the table for once (“Mom won’t stop asking, you know”) and taking turns guessing what’s in the stew this time (“I bet it’s more mushrooms.” “There’s _always_ mushrooms!”)

Wirt hasn’t moved from his shellshocked spot in the grass a full minute after the men file indoors, so Beatrice trudges outside to gather him—with her sisters crowding in the doorway to observe. Wirt watches her approach with round eyes. His brow wrinkles in bewilderment beneath the cowlick of his forelock. “I think your dad just patted my head.”

“Told you,” Beatrice smirks without missing a step, “you’re the beloved family pet. Who’s a good boy? Let’s go inside now, come on.” She pats her knees and whistles for him until Wirt blushes and crosses his arms.

“You know how I feel about… going indoors.” Skittish as a spooked colt is how he feels. So claustrophobic that when he attempts to edge past a door frame his mind shuts down as if someone has nailed him inside a coffin. 

Beatrice exhales loudly, melodramatic and mockingly heartbroken. She smells like bread flour and simmering vegetables from helping her mother in the kitchen; a few strands of hair spring loose from the messy bun piled on top of her head and curl by her ears or stick to the nape of her neck. “You’ve lived the majority of your life indoors. Trust me—it _shows._ Besides, you’ve literally been living indoors since I brought you home.”

“The mill is different. It’s got… oh.”

Wirt gapes at the repaired mill with its solid tree-fortified walls and roof and registers what he’s done. “I c-can’t go back in there,” he mumbles, expressionless. “I’ve ruined it."

Beatrice stands next to him with her hands on her hips and appraises the handiwork of her family and their Beast. Her words are grave and weighted with foreboding. “Looks like the forest is taking over part of my home.” Then she snickers at Wirt’s consternated denials. “Will you miss having all those cracks to look out of?” 

“About that…” Wirt drops his voice and uneasily scratches the back of his neck. “I’ve been thinking… now that winter is more or less over… I wasn’t going to be staying in the mill anymore, regardless. I sh-should go on my way. Wander the Unknown again. Let your family get back to their lives.”

“Oh. Okay. So when are we leaving?”

“I wasn’t sure if I wanted to say goodbye to… wait, _we?_”

Beatrice emits a withering intensity that warns Wirt of an impending verbal abrading if he argues. The setting sun limns her curly russet hair in a bright gold halo and throws sparks in her narrowed eyes. “Do your ears work, Wirt?”

At the risk of conflagration, Wirt tenses his jaw and draws himself up to his full height—as tall as Beatrice’s father but made all the more imposing for the horizontal spears of his antlers. “No, _no,_ absolutely not.”

“Your ears absolutely do not work?”

“You are absolutely _not_ coming with me. Ever. At all.” He points an authoritative talon at her and Beatrice’s eyes thin to dangerous slits. A slash of true fear knifes through him. But that doesn’t change the fact that he never wants Beatrice to see him at peak Beast, never wants her to watch him grow Edelwood over the bodies of the deceased or witness how _animalistic_ he becomes at the intoxicating presence of deep despair, never wants her to hear the melody that unfurls unbidden from his throat in the night. He’s been at his very best here with her family—has discovered that he maybe _isn’t_ fundamentally evil—and if Beatrice _does_ go with him then there’s a possibility that he fails and he can’t take it. And Wirt _has_ to leave. There is never going to be a reality where he simply stays peacefully with her family and pretends the Unknown isn’t calling.

Wirt breathes hard, staring down the girl who witnessed his Beastliness and promised to be his friend. His velvet voice cracks. “I—I don’t want to disappoint you.” 

Beatrice yawns theatrically. “It’s tedious, always having the same conversation with you. Being neurotic must be pretty tiring.” She takes his misshapen hand as if it’s the most natural thing in the world and hauls him toward the house—gritting out an aggravated grumble when she spots her sisters all gawking at her shamelessly from the threshold. Wirt moans and covers his face with his free claws. 

“We’ll figure out your sleeping arrangements after dinner,” his self-proclaimed keeper hisses under her breath. “Fair warning: if you try to sneak out? It won’t just be _me_ coming after you.”

As if to back her up, three of Beatrice’s youngest siblings dart from the doorway and flank Wirt to herd him closer to the house, squealing and tugging on his clothes for attention. Some massive emotion—protectiveness, possessiveness, affection, embarrassment, confusion, _belonging_—swells in his chest to the point that Wirt can’t completely catch his breath. He doesn’t want to ever leave.

Which that makes it all the harder when he does.


	3. 🙞Flower🙜

Wirt eats dinner standing in the threshold, back to the woods and front to the bustling family table. This is the first time he’s eaten a proper meal with Beatrice and company that didn’t involve him receiving scraps like a stray on his hay-bed. Despite the fact that everyone has to shout at him to include him in the conversation, Wirt feels a cozy flush of contentment. He is welcome. Wanted. 

The Unknown whispers insistently at the back of his mind all the while. Those susurrations crescendo day by beautiful springtime day, an itch prickling his flesh and a compulsion that pulls at his ribs, demanding attention. There are corners of his kingdom in great need of The Beast’s care… places where winter’s fangs have not yet relinquished their stubborn, glacial hold. Lonely cadavers left decomposing, Edelwood growing jagged and stunted without a guiding voice to make it strong. Wirt has done everything he can think of to repay Beatrice—would gladly do more, for years to come—yet he’s acutely, distressingly aware of what his neglect means for the rest of this world. The Unknown won’t let him forget his place in this puzzle. This prison.

Wirt is meant to obey. He cannot become some tame creature that Beatrice feeds and shelters out of obligation. That would be… selfish. And Wirt rejects any path that would make him more like The Beast he trounced, even if it means walking away from the first taste of happiness he’s enjoyed since growing antlers. 

Even if it means becoming an Undertaker. 

Since the mill is sealed solid from the elements, Wirt is unable to return to his hay. Even sticking a hoof beyond the door frame makes him tremble, the center light of his eyes flickering sulfur-yellow. As it turns out, however, The Beast doesn’t actually _need_ to sleep… so he is perfectly happy sitting by the mill’s water wheel and listening to the chirp of nighttime insects over the river’s lazy flow. 

Wirt eats breakfast with the family from an open window, biscuits and jam passed back and forth across the sash. When the weather is warm enough for him to shrug off his cloak and roll up his sleeves, revealing how far the dark bark of his talons plates his forearms, he sits through a picnic with Beatrice and the younger half of her siblings on the front lawn while her older brothers and father ride into town for supplies. Thirteen-year-old Cordelia patiently walks Wirt through the art of French braiding her hair; Wirt, with his finely tapered claws, turns out to have a surprising talent. 

He stays for the first round of planting. He is _not_ adept at sewing seeds, to the family’s disappointment… but yellow-green sprouts push through the soil after he passes each row of dirt, tiny cotyledons that shouldn’t start growing for two weeks at least. A thick thatch of wildflowers dots the place where he’s spent his nights by the water wheel and a rainbow of petals rapidly spreads all around the house. This place _thrives_ with Wirt around… and each sign is a scrape on his heart, reminding him that he can’t stay, can’t stay, _can’t stay._

For Wirt’s very last dinner at the grist mill, he presents Beatrice’s mother (addressed as “Ma’am” by Wirt, again provoking giggles from the family) with a bouquet of crocuses and daffodils in a riot of colors. The woman, touched, flusters Wirt into silence by gathering him into a hug that squeezes every last cubic centimeter of air from his lungs. “I’m glad Beatrice found you,” she murmurs into the part of his hair. Wirt’s so choked up he has to pretend he’s rubbing something out of his eye so nobody notices the ash-grey tears welling up (Ma’am does notice, but compassionately says nothing). 

Later, after everyone except Wirt helps with dishes (“S-sorry, I can’t come in”), Beatrice jabs him in the side with her elbow while Wirt hovers just outside the door. “You know if you start bringing my mom flowers, she’ll want them all the time, right? You’ll be going on wild goose-chases through the woods searching for her favorite blooms.”

“Well,” Wirt shrugs, strained. “I could probably just… grow whatever she wanted. With enough practice. I—I think I can do that. Grow certain flowers where they aren’t already growing, I mean.”

“What’s that?” Beatrice stretches with exaggerated care next to him. “You started talking for too long and lost me.”

A retort prepares itself on Wirt’s tongue. He feels the shape of it in his mouth but can’t spit it out because his heart is crushing itself, preemptively missing this girl and her big family, aching at his inevitable cowardice when he steals back into the Unknown tonight. He wonders, not for the first time, what would happen if Beatrice _does_ come with him. If he can bring her along, just for a little while, to keep him company as he oversees the status of his domain. 

But then Wirt remembers what he might revert to once he’s beyond the warmth of this family and resolves that it’s better if Beatrice never sees him again.

He spends the rest of the evening basking in their laughter and arguments and words of love like a sapling stretching toward the sunlight, and counting all the bluebird motifs ironically hidden throughout the front room of their house. Audrey, Beatrice, and the youngest brothers and sisters all wish Wirt goodnight on their way upstairs to their bedrooms. He waves to them wordlessly, not trusting himself to speak lest his false smile shatters.

🙞 ------------------------- 🙜

It’s been nearly a month since Wirt swam into that plane of the Unknown where he is bodiless and everywhere and everything at once. After he is _completely certain_ that everyone is asleep, that he can hear the rhythm of their breathing calm and unchanging, he takes a final walk around the property. Wirt can’t tell them goodbye the right way, but he can ensure that Beatrice and her family will be comfortable until winter cycles back around.

It takes little concentration for Wirt to pour his gratitude into the land. The Unknown consumes it voraciously, soaks it up, and responds by erupting with new vivacious plant life. Peonies crowd for his attention and flood the sugary evening air with their perfume; bluebells and forget-me-nots reflect the pristine cerulean of his glowing eyes; bleeding-heart shrubs extend their delicate branches toward him, dripping with rounded blossoms; daffodils and flox and irises practically spring from the soil, blooming the moment Wirt’s talons brush their satin petals. He shrugs off his cloak to gather bushels of edible leaves: chickweed and yellow dock, fiddleheads and dandelions, yarrow and wild carrots. He makes several trips to and from the front door with neatly tied bundles of goods to feed the family or else sell at the nearest town. 

It kills him to know he probably won’t be back here again. If it’s this hard ripping himself away _tonight,_ he cannot comprehend how hard it would be a next time. So Wirt shoves the part of him that aches down as deep as it will possibly sink, down under the fecund mud and grasping roots, and after he buries it he exhales a steadying breath and plunges out of the limits of his bones.

🙞 ------------------------- 🙜

Banishing all that persistent frost proves as simple as stretching a limb that’s fallen asleep. Wherever his awareness tingles with cold and he feels the frigid bite of snow, Wirt extends his willpower like a benevolent shadow. The forest yawns awake under his gentle persuasion; green things unfurl and animals stir in their winter beds, signaled to restart their lives at long last.

In places that are particularly stubborn—or else saturated with so much sorrow that a mere thought won’t heal them—Wirt materializes in his anonymous guise of darkness. He melts iced-over sheets of snow with the burn of his gaze; he digs his claws into the soil and _commands_ the woods to cease their slumber. 

There are, as he expected, those lost and hopeless souls who did not survive until spring. Wirt sobs through the notes of his song that grows the Edelwood around unknown bodies, sealing them from the elements and transforming flesh into black oil. Staying with Beatrice and her family has undone the cauterization necessary to carry out this duty without flinching. The inside of Wirt’s chest is tender and raw from grief… and from the sudden and savage return of _hunger craving need_ that spears him as soon as the mature Edelwood opens its leaves. The existence of the Dark Lantern—which had faded into a faint pang behind Wirt’s sternum during his recovery—leeches the strength from his muscles and his mind and it is inconceivable to ignore it. Creating a veritable botanical garden all around Beatrice’s home had barely even _winded_ The Beast; gradually, as he turns the season throughout the Unknown, Wirt understands that he’s back where he started… starving and alone and desperate to hang on.

He swears he can hear his predecessor's merciless laughter haunting him when he strains himself too much. So although Wirt struggles to keep his eyes open and traveling makes him breathless and he’s so, _so_ exhausted, more tired than he’s been in months, he pushes himself to stay alert. To encourage more sunlight to spill past the forest’s highest branches. To verify that his kingdom is moving on from one of the worst winters it has ever weathered in its history. 

Wirt only goes looking for the Woodsman once, about seven days after he left the grist mill. He lies to himself and figures that if he can just _see_ his Lantern, just to make sure his flame is still glimmering and the old man hasn’t given up, then that will be fine. He’ll point the keeper of his soul toward the resting places of the people he’s added to the forest… maybe give the Woodsman some supplies or whatever blessings he can spare. If Wirt could live with an entire _family_ of dangerously vulnerable people and not destroy them then what’s stopping him from visiting a single human being?

It will be different, The Beast tells himself. Wirt has changed. He knows he can be good, gentle, generous. He will convince the Woodsman.

Noon hangs the sun high and shining gold when Wirt clambers from the center of an elm tree and perches about ten feet above the Woodsman’s head, legs swinging from the long bough. The axe-wielding man has taken off his characteristic top hat and exchanged his heavy coat for a lighter jacket… but doesn’t appear as if he’s had a decent night’s sleep, much less a permanent place to rest, for quite some time. Before Wirt focuses on the Dark Lantern hanging by the Woodsman’s hip he blurts out his concern and accidentally gives away his position. 

“Have you ever gone home?”

The Woodsman yells out in surprise, swiping the axe upward—thankfully missing Wirt’s swaying hooves. Then an ugly expression of resentment hardens his features. “I thought you learned your lesson, Beast. Go on. Leave me be.”

“No, wait.” Wirt shimmies down a few branches to keep up with the Woodsman as he stalks off, holding the Lantern closer. “I’m not here for the… for what you think.”

“Sure you are,” snaps the Woodsman brusquely without looking back. “But you needn’t bother. I’ve done my job, traveling the Unknown to keep this damned thing lit. You’re still around, aren’t you? Still feeding off innocents like the parasite you are?”

Fury surges in Wirt whiplash-fast. A harsh squall shreds through the canopy and forces the elm he’s crouched in to quake. Yet he swallows the anger, banishes it into the wood gripped between his talons, and controls his breathing so that he can speak normally. “I͚̖̤ţ̠͜'͉͔̲s͙̟̱ ̬̝͜ṉ̜̯o̼̭ͅt͔̺̩ like that… I don’t want to—”

The Woodsman turns to glare at him. His red-rimmed eyes are hollowed with dark shadows. The _despair_ spiking from his haggard frame has Wirt’s jaw tensing and his mouth watering and his mind forgetting why he sought the Woodsman out in the first place. “Of course you don’t want to,” the old man mutters bitterly. 

Wirt grapples with the right thing to say. There isn’t one. “You should go home,” he eventually settles on, lamely. “Take a break. Let me bring the Edelwood to you, so you’re not burning yourself out to keep the Lantern burning. I can bring you supplies.”

Suspicion, sharp and tart, sours the Woodsman’s despair. “Oh? How thoughtful. You don’t want to take your Lantern back?”

Wirt swallows hard. He wants his Lantern like food and water and shelter. “Ṇ̡̤̅̄͒ǒ̩͎͈̓̊.̖͕̳͛̈͆”

“Very well,” answers the Woodsman. His hand tightens on his axe. “Then stay away from me. I’m never going back to that empty house, and I will never return your power as long as my heart still beats. Did you really think you could trick me into giving up the one thing that keeps you in check?”

The sneer he sends Wirt has The Beast bristling all over again. “Just let me help you…”

But the Woodsman does not heed him. Rather than subject himself to the temptation of snagging the old man in Edelwood and feasting on his hopelessness, Wirt leans back into the elm and transports himself far away from the Dark Lantern and its doomed, unhappy keeper.

🙞 ------------------------- 🙜

Wirt remembers all the people who left him sacrifices during the winter because they won’t let him forget them.

Over the next week after he fails to befriend the Woodsman, Wirt revisits places that gleam a little brighter in his periphery—places where people made offerings that he accepted. Not the scary, gory sacrifices that he asked wolves to take care of; those atrocities he continues to snub, exhorting predators to clean up whenever he senses that obvious violence. But the spots where farmers left him harmless trinkets? The villages where Wirt’s gifts of winter foraging inspired neighbors to share one another’s goods and welcome each other into their homes? These are areas of the Unknown where spring arrives in full, joyous force—crops and flowers flourishing—blessed tenfold for the kindness that surrounds them. Here The Beast stops to tentatively smile and delight in a brighter legacy he helped to found. If people hide a few more treats for him in gratitude for the death of winter, then what’s so wrong about Wirt taking them and holding them closer to his heart?

Thankful survivors prove that not everything is desolate in the Unknown. Perhaps the good is finding balance with the bad… hope taking the pendulum back from heartache. Wirt visits these capsules of decency and compassion after cultivating Edelwood brings tears to his eyes and bruises his spirit. He might fit the mantle of “gravedigger” a little too well… but maybe there’s nuance in his role. There might be some slack in his chains yet undiscovered.

It’s still not a life he would willingly choose for himself. His suffering is not utterly crushing him and that’s about the best he thinks he deserves. He is on the precipice of convincing himself that “this is it” when something happens that throws his progress straight into a ditch.

Like the weeping blood of a sacrifice, a festering boil of _wrongness_ infects Wirt’s awareness one frightful night. He’s recently finished up humming through a magnanimous farmer’s vegetable garden; lettuce and broccoli bud in the wake of his hoofprints and The Beast knows after observing the farmer from afar that the openhanded man will distribute the surplus from this bumper crop to a large family living five miles south. It’s a happy job Wirt is happy to do, and his rare sense of fulfillment makes that poisonous _wrongness_ all the more potent when it stings him. He tumbles disjointedly over the fence he was trying to scale as if nailed by a wasp.

This is no invitation from a cult to earn his favor. It smacks of impending demise, something trapped and rotting fast. Wirt hadn’t thought himself capable of getting sick, and nevertheless for the next sunrise and sunset fever abruptly plagues his every hour, burning his skin and speeding his pulse. He shivers in piles of leaves or shoots of grass, unable to transport himself without vertigo tackling him. He knows that whatever this is, it isn't _inside_ him... it's contaminating him from a distance. Intense and terrible. Dread lurches like vomit in his stomach when he asks the Unknown to show him the source of this illness that wracks him without warning. 

A vision is brought to him from the thousands of petals clustered around the old grist mill. The forest, of course, rejoices in its vitality… which makes the seeds of withering he senses stand out like a septic wound. Wirt gasps out “Beatrice” before swallowing bile and clawing his way into the woods.


	4. 🙞Family🙜

Night has only just fallen when Wirt arrives at the mill again, stepping from the treeline out onto the path that runs to the entrance. He’s stunned by the familiarity that hits him—certain scents that instantly trigger recollections of bleeding and healing and spending time with Beatrice and her exuberant kin. His eyes water. His throat constricts. It would feel like coming home if not for the sickening wave of heat that strikes his skin like kindling.

The Beast banishes the shade wrapped around him as he sweeps toward the house. Andrew and Bram are reclined outside on Adirondack chairs with a lantern glowing between them; they’re deep in conversation but break into staggered silence at the blaze of Wirt’s eyes flaring over the hundreds upon hundreds of flowers spread like a rich tapestry about the property. Andrew exclaims “Wirt?” and Bram jumps from his seat, agitation overtaking his surprise.

Wirt cuts to the point. “Is Beatrice all right?” He halts, voice tense, hackles lifting when Bram and Andrew march onto the dirt path right for him. “I came as soon as I—I knew that something was wrong—”

“Oh, did you now?” Bram practically shouts. His live-coal temper is a different, separate incalescence from the one that emanates from inside the house and it worries Wirt all the more as the stronger lad prowls toward him. “Where’ve you been, Beast? Nice of you to drop in.” And without breaking his stride Bram hurls a right hook that lands dead-center on Wirt’s nose.

There’s a crunch and blinding pain and Wirt’s eyes filling with tears and a gush of blackness that fountains from his nose down over his mouth. Bram clutches his cloak in one meaty fist and drags him back toward the trees away from the house while Andrew jogs to catch up. 

“W-wait,” Wirt pants. He tries to free himself but Bram throws him against an oak like a charging bull. He narrowly keeps his hooves under him when Bram grabs him again by the front of his shirt and lifts him bodily, bark scuffing up his spine. Beatrice’s second-oldest brother is slightly shorter than Wirt but built like an ox and obviously mad enough to flatten Wirt like one.

“You made her _cry,_” the older boy seethes. “Everyone wasted their time looking for you. And now that she’s sick, you’re suddenly interested in coming back? I should tan your hide and use it to make her a new pair of boots!”

Andrew stops a few yards behind Bram, rigidly reserved. Accusations are written coldly all over his serious face. He makes no effort to stop his brother. A memory of archers and alarm bells collides with Wirt’s skull and he keens out a distressed noise that snares in his gritted teeth.

“What do you have to say for yourself?” Bram bellows. “Answer me!”

“I didn’t… I wasn’t trying to h-hurt anyone…” Wirt shudders. Bram raises his fist and The Beast braces for arrows to pierce him and doesn’t notice the two foxes that slink swiftly into the scene, taking up a threatening stance on either side of Andrew and Bram, instinctively coming to their lord’s aid. Their yellow eyes catch moonlight as they glance between the outraged brothers and the fearful Beast; they snarl uncertainly at Bram and Andrew, rust-colored fur bristling and fangs unveiled. 

“Call them off,” Andrew orders with controlled hostility. 

“They’ll attack you to protect me,” Wirt says softly, as calmly as he can while someone’s fist hovers in front of his face. “I would never tell them to, but they’d do it anyway, because they want to. And I won’t be happy if you hurt them.”

A muscle jumps in Bram’s clenched jaw. His frustration scorches Wirt, a molten-metal tang that mixes with acrid anger and coats Wirt’s tongue as thickly as his mouthful of blood. He’s waiting for Wirt to fight back. _Furious_ that The Beast is merely looking at him, unmoving, sad and remorseful when Bram needs him to be horrible enough to justify hitting. 

“P-please let me see her,” Wirt requests. He speaks hardly above a whisper, as if he’s trying to gentle a territorial bear. 

Bram shakes him, knuckles cracking when he tightens his fist again. “Why? So you can add her to your forest, _Beast?_ So you can break her heart all over again?”

Wirt’s expression is wounded; pain that has nothing to do with his surely broken nose seizes his throat. “H-how… how could you think that? That I’d return for the sole purpose of hurting the person I owe my humanity to? I w-w-would _never_ hurt Beatrice.” He swallows. Lays a bark-carved hand over Bram’s vice-grip on his shirt. “Not like that. I’d never harm any of you. I promise.”

“Bram.” Andrew’s tone changes. He’s watching his brother and Wirt with a level, calculating glare, ignoring the foxes spitting and yowling at their flanks. “I think he means it.”

For a few tense seconds in which all Wirt hears is his own pulse rushing in his ears and Bram’s harsh breathing, the young man and The Beast stare each other down. Finally Bram wrenches his hand away from Wirt’s, openly disgusted; he spears the antlered boy with a thunderous scowl before scraping his heel to turn toward the mill. “You’re going to pay for upsetting my sister.” He bites out those last words and is gone, abandoning Wirt and Andrew.

The Beast trembles, though he reshapes his stony mask to address Beatrice’s eldest brother. “Thanks.”

“For what?” Andrew returns icily. “I think Bram got his point across.” He leans forward, meeting Wirt’s gaze unwaveringly. “You made a lot of trouble for us, sneaking away like a coward. We don’t take kindly to people disrespecting our kin. You’d better apologize to Bea, and the rest of my family, and do it quick.”

The Beast nods frantically. “Y-yeah. I will. I’m going to.”

He follows Andrew back to the house like a child that knows its about to be horribly punished, shoulders slumped and claws twisting themselves in knots between wiping the obsidian dripping from his nose. Beatrice’s mother—and the rest of her siblings—wait for them in the front room, woken up by the racket outside. 

Ma’am stands in her nightgown, looking frazzled and tired and astonished to see Wirt; her brows knit together and she blusters out a vexed sigh. “I thought I had a few more years yet for this sort of drama,” she mutters. Raising her voice, “I can guess why you’re back. I’m sorry, young man, but Beatrice is in bed for the night. There’s no telling when she’ll be well enough to visit you out there. You’re more than welcome to stay nearby and wait for her to recover…”

“Actually,” Wirt interrupts modestly, “I’d like to see her now. Inside. If that’s okay.”

Andrew and Ma’am stare at him in shock. It’s silent enough between the three of them that the nighttime chirp of crickets rings clear as a bell. “Inside?” Andrew echoes belatedly. 

Wirt bows his head. “Yes. Please.”

He worries they’ll deny him. He wouldn’t blame them if they did; however, Ma’am scoots away from the entrance just enough for her son and Wirt to pass her by, her mouth as crooked with confusion as Wirt’s head as he maneuvers his antlers through the doorway. “Upstairs, first door to your right,” she tells him. “Make it quick. If she’s sleeping, don’t wake her, understand?”

Wirt knows he should answer the lady of the house. Unfortunately, he’s totally invested in not sprinting back out the door and under the openness of the night sky to escape the oppressive weight of a roof above his head. The best he can do is nod stiffly before marching up the steps, one hoof at a time, breathing in and out through his sore battered bloody nose and digging his talons so hard into his palms he feels the wood scratch. Beatrice is close. The _wrongness_ that warned him out in the Unknown scorches him like a forest fire desperate to be put out and it’s waiting for him on the other side of Beatrice’s bedroom door.

He inhales deeply before turning the doorknob. His eye illuminate the room. “Beatrice?” he whispers hesitantly. “Are you awake?”

A sickly moan and the threatening rumble of a dog answers him. When Wirt lets himself in he notes Rusty in the corner, and his friend swathed in a pile of quilts on a cot across from a large bed where he guesses all her sisters sleep together. She turns her pale face in his direction and yawns. “W-Wirt?” Her bleary eyes can’t seem to focus on him, nor can she keep them open; her lids shutter downward and she wheezes with fatigue. “Is that you? Come… here.”

The Beast obliges. He leans cautiously over her makeshift sickbed, claws spread on the blankets to steady himself. “I’m right here, Beatrice. I’ll stay for as long as—OW! Ow, ow ow ow…”

Evidently Beatrice has focused all her strength into her fingertips, because Wirt doubts he can extricate himself from the way she’s viciously pinching his ear without ripping his ear clean off. Then the vindictive girl _yanks_ and Wirt whimpers like a beaten dog, contorting himself so as not to fall on top of her, pleading for mercy between yelps of pain. 

“You left.” She growls at him without opening her eyes, sunken into her pillows like an old woman on her deathbed. “I _told_ you… no more being sad… all by yourself.” Perspiration glistens on her brow and makes flyaway hairs stick to her skin; this is the first time Wirt has seen her with her locks down, and he might admire how long her bright ginger curls were if Beatrice weren’t singlehandedly torturing him. She is absolutely the _picture_ of sweet country girl vulnerability except for her killer vice grip. A sadistic mutter parts her lips. “Idiot.”

“Yes, I’m an idiot, I am the biggest fool to ever breathe, an imbecile of the lowest order and _will you please for the love of god let go of me?_” Beatrice just frowns, like she has to consider it, and Wirt eeks out a piteous whine. “Come on, Beatrice. Your sisters will want to go to bed soon, and I can’t still be here, right?”

She cracks open one eye and slurs out a surly response. “Just sleep at the foot of the bed. Like ol’ Rusty. Like a _dog._”

If Wirt weren’t sure of Beatrice’s mental status before, he’s pretty certain now. He can feel the scorch of her fever pressing against him as if he’s too close to a campfire. Her brain must be fried—that’s the best explanation he comes up with for the nonsense she just uttered. “Even if you’re joking,” the boy stammers, wincing when she tugs his ear again, “that’s hardly appropriate. And I don’t think Rusty would appreciate sharing his spot.”

Hearing his name, the mutt rumbles out a warning from where he’s lying. “See?” pleads Wirt. 

A questioning knock has Wirt freezing in place, panic jetting through his bloodstream. Audrey slowly opens the door to discover Wirt with half his body bent over Beatrice and Beatrice still hanging onto his ear and The Beast fretfully hissing “it’s not what it looks like, _help me,_ please” while the dog snarls nervously and uselessly a yard or two away. The elder girl with her dark copper hair purses her lips. 

“Is Bea punishing you, then?”

“Yes,” Wirt replies sheepishly. Beatrice releases his ear—he exhales in relief, about to straighten his back—but then his tormentor latches onto his nearest antler, mumbling out still more threats and curses. “I tried telling her that I need to leave… to let the rest of you in here, I mean.” He adds the qualifier quickly, hoping not to further anger the incredibly aggressive and out-of-it Beatrice. “I can wait downstairs or outside or anywhere your family will put up with me.”

Audrey pads barefoot into the room and stands on the other side of the cot, checking Beatrice’s temperature by gently placing the back of her hand upon her younger sister’s forehead. “Beatrice? You need to let go of Wirt.”

Beatrice resentfully grumbles something neither Audrey nor Wirt can understand… and then the hand keeping Wirt’s antler prisoner falls limply to the sheets. She shuffles in place for a bit before settling… and almost instantly drifting off to sleep. Wirt could compose an entire sonnet in gratitude. A verse comes to his tongue before Audrey gives him a cool stare and motions to the door. “You better not go far, Beast. I’ll finish what she started if you think about taking off during the night.”

After Bram nearly broke his nose, Wirt believes this threat. He can hardly blame Beatrice’s siblings for their rabid protectiveness because _he_ feels the same way; if it were someone else hurting this family, the monstrous boy could imagine hurting that person with everything he has. “I wouldn’t dream of it,” The Beast murmurs humbly. “I won’t make that mistake again.”

**Author's Note:**

> Bonus Tracks: "Poor In Love" by Destroyer; "Jews For Jesus Blues" by Clem Snide; "White Winter Hymnal" by Fleet Foxes
> 
> <strike>So hello this was only supposed to be two chapters.</strike> Apologies for that. 
> 
> Believe it or not I do in fact have a goal for this fic (as about four pages of bullet notes can attest). I hope I don't scare anyone off by what seems to be a wandering and nonsensical "plot" - here's some more gratitude for those brave people who are still with me! Your encouragement is the sunshine of my heart :)
> 
> Also, a dumb comic I made inspired by the last part of "Prince of the Unknown":  
http://imgur . com/gallery/kWcxYt3
> 
> If you have any silly memes or stick figures inspired by my trash, please do not be shy to share. I eat it up! And in case anyone is curious, this is the order of Beatrice's siblings from oldest to youngest:  
Andrew, Bram, Audrey, Beatrice, Calvin, Cordelia, Dorian, Dante, Florence, Edwin. In this AU Beatrice is 16 years old going on 17; her oldest brother Andrew is about 19 (but who cares about time in the Unknown)
> 
> **Edit 11/15/19:** Whiggity in their goodness and wisdom helped tighten up these last two chapters so that they better convey what I wanted to show. Not sure what you're doing here if you haven't read their works yet _but you should take a gander._


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